In a unique and diverse Detroit neighborhood a transition is taking place. People are moving out, but people are also starting to move back. There is a devotion to this neighborhood, a unique challange to create a place that is rich in diversity, exciting and fun to live in, beautiful and clean to play in. Ride-it Sculpture Park come this summer, with your help, will become the first sculpture park where you can officially ride the art. Not to mention a place where bored neighborhood teenagers and adults can meet, play, create, build and ride on.

Ride it Sculpture Park consists of four vacant commercial lots along East Davison Freeway in Detroit and an adjacent vacant house as the main site for the project. The house will serve as a mini indoor park, transforming parts of the house to be skateable and livable at the same time for visiting skateboarders and artists. The park will extend into the neighborhood revamping neglected alleys, garages and other vacant lots, creating a new and positive use for the forgotten and dismissed landscapes of this great city.

Haroshi is a Japanese sculptor known for his work made from compressed skateboards. It was held at Huf's Headquarters in downtown L.A. and featured the music of Tommy Guerrero's band. The house was packed, tacos were eaten, and tricks were landed over the art. A successful night all around." -Douglas Neill

Our friends at Juice release the newest Adidas trip to Montreal from back in September. Besides the great skating (looking at you, Busenitz *3min), check the amazing subway stations that were designed for Expo '67 and the 1976 Summer Olympics. Nice work, fellas.

We've been hearing about the SOMA West skatepark and how the city is going to start construction for years now. Well, The Tony Hawk Foundation has dropped $10,000 on it to help the city get started, and they're beginning construction this spring with the park completed by fall 2012. From the images we've seen, it looks super sick.

If you're a skater in the city and want another park at Waller & Stanyan/ Golden Gate Park, be respectful of the neighborhood as the park is in a trial phase. The city is tracking the amount of trash, graffiti, vandalism, sound, crime, as well as how many youth use the space, its positivity on the neighborhood, its success. If all goes well, San Francisco will have another skatepark right there at the end of Waller.

SF's SOMA West Skatepark coming fall 2012

Man, when we were skating all the time, all we had was Hunter's Point Dish and then crappy Crocker. Nice to see San Francisco build some facilities for the sports kids wanna play.

I think I would still prefer my Zip Zinger, but this lil' dude is kinda rad... and if you're old timers like us, this Stereo Vinyl Cruiser would most likely have been your first setup when you were 10. Not too bad for $80.

Stereo's Vinyl Cruiser plastic skateboard cruiser complete looks like a vinyl record and harks back to the heritage of Stereo, early jazz, and blues vinyl records. Stereo owners Jason Lee and Chris Pastras rode these style of boards when they were kids and ride them today, after enjoying skateboarding careers that spanned two decades. The skateboard comes complete with Stereo "Vinyl Cruiser" reinforced injection-molded plastic deck with traction grooves, 3.15-inch trucks with 90a bushings, 59mm soft 78a durometer wheels, a sticker pack for customization, and free matching Stereo sunglasses.

Ok older skaters, let's take a trip down memory lane and respect to Mr. Chick Treece of McRAD. Thanks to Eric Pritchard for emailing over his latest video work.

After getting their start opening for Minor Threat, McRad rose to fame in the skateboard world after being featured in Stacey Peralta and Cr Steck's 1988 movie Public Domain. The leaser of McRad, Chick Treece along with Ray Barbee and CR Stecyk tell the story of the band and its place in skateboard history. Documented by Eric Pritchard.

I had no other plan. At that time the city was Mecca for skateboarding, and skaters from all over the world were making the pilgrimage. From skate videos and magazines, SF beckoned us with its exciting variety of terrain: hills, marble ledges, embankments, and smooth city streets. ~continue reading

We are very sad to learn that skateboarding icon Eric Swenson was the one who ended his life in front of the Mission police station Monday morning. Eric was one of the people responsible for the creation of Thrasher Magazine, Independent trucks, and Spitfire wheels to name just a few brands.

While working at Thrasher Magazine I never had the chance to speak with Eric in person, but highly respected him for helping to create the industry we all so dearly loved and love today. In a time when other businesses ran from skateboarding, Eric stuck it out doing what he loved most and giving back along the way. Sincere condolences to his family and friends.

San Francisco will be getting a more street oriented skate park on the closed-off one-block stretch of Waller Street beginning next month. The city will install "pieces of granite and concrete barriers" for a 6 month trial period. If all goes well, the city will then search out the funds to build out a permanent one. Watch out though as there is a "well organized" group of NIMBYs (Friends of the Haight) who fear that the park "will be a magnet for graffiti vandals and drug dealers"... Really? Just like baseball fields, basketball and tennis courts are?! Give me a fucking break.

Some redbull contest a couple years back held where the new skatepark will be located.

By the way, skateboarding is now the third largest sport for children between the ages of 6 – 18. It is more popular than basketball and baseball for children in that age group. Is this what people want? To deny their children a safe place to have fun and exercise? When children get bored is when the trouble begins. Hopefully the 6 month trial goes well.

We really like a comment left on SFGate by Bill Choisser --> Parks are for recreation (aren't those two words in the name of the agency running them?) and skating is what today's kids do. The park in some ways is stuck in the 1890s, when it was built. How many kids today really want to ride horses and play with model boats? I don't see many kids riding by my house on horses... Golden Gate Park was a park before any of the whiners in the neighborhood moved there. Hell, it was a park before any of them were born. They probably chose to live near the park because they like to look at all the lovely flowers, but not everybody's idea of recreation is to look at flowers.

Underskatement is back and they want your films for this US touring skate-centric film festival. Fecal Face is proud to be a media sponsor of this great program that's now in its 10 year.

UnderSkatement is a traveling film festival featuring short films made exclusively by skateboarders. Underskatement originated in 2001 to showcase the talents of both well-known and unknown skateboarder filmmakers. Entering this film festival doesn’t require a big name in the skateboarding world, but rather-just like skateboarding- requires creativity and imagination.

I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

SAN FRANCISCO --- The Headlands Center for the Arts is preparing for their largest fundraiser of the year set to go down on June 4th at SOMArts here in the city. Art auction, food, drinks, live music, etc and all for helping to support a great institution up in the Marin Headlands. ~details

ABOUT HEADLANDSHeadlands Center for the Arts provides an unparalleled environment for the creative process and the development of new work and ideas. Through a range of programs for artists and the public, we offer opportunities for reflection, dialogue, and exchange that build understanding and appreciation for the role of art in society.

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

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